he is dead you must command your husband in the queen’s name. Or anyone whose loyalty you trust, whose silence you can guarantee. If there is no one left alive but you women, you will have to do it yourself. Carry a knife. Burn this.
1569, NOVEMBER, TUTBURY CASTLE: MARY
At last! I think, Good God! At last! as I hear the bell tolling, and know at once that the war has started. At last they have come for me, and only a day to spare before I would have been kidnapped by that brute Hastings. I wake and dress, as fast as I can, my hands trembling with laces, and start to pack the things I must take with me, burning the letters from my ambassador, from my betrothed, from the Spanish ambassador, from his agent Ridolfi, from Bothwell. I wait for the countess or for Shrewsbury to come and beg me to hurry, hurry to run away from this castle that they cannot defend. I shall travel with them. I shall obey their orders. I dare not defy them and risk Hastings’ snatching me from them. My only safety is to stay with Shrewsbury until my army catches us.
I won’t leave Shrewsbury until I am safe with my own army. I dare not. He has been my only friend in England; I have seen no other man that I can trust. And he has never been anything but kind to me. He has never been anything but honorable. A woman with a man like this at her side would be safe. God knows how much I long to be safe.
Westmorland has sworn to me he will come wherever I am. Only if they take the road to London and to the Tower must I make my escape. If Elizabeth, in her fear, tries to put me in the dungeon where she herself waited for her death sentence, I must get away.
I don’t need to resist them, for while this war is waging, it does not matter where they take me. The lords will demand my freedom as part of their settlement with Elizabeth, wherever I am hidden. They will demand the right to our religion and the right to my freedom, and with the North up in arms she will be forced to agree. The North has always been another kingdom; Elizabeth’s rule has never run north of the Trent. No Tudor has ever ventured farther than York. If the northerners defy her she will have to make an agreement with them, whatever her preferences.
Beyond all this is a greater plan, an ambitious plan that I do not sanction. I dare not sanction it. I will not make war against a queen on her throne. But of course they all think that if a battle is joined, and it goes their way, then they can march on London. They can take me to the very throne of England itself. This is what Philip of Spain and his ambassador want. This is why his banker Roberto Ridolfi has paid over a fortune in Spanish gold. To put me on the throne not only of Scotland, but of England too. This is nothing more than my right. Elizabeth is a disowned bastard of the late King Henry; I am the granddaughter of his sister. I am the true heir and I should have the throne. I was raised to claim it as my own. They call it the “great enterprise of England” and they swear it can be done. If the people of England rise to defend their faith, shall they consent to a settlement that leaves a heretic on the throne to rule them? What is the point of rising against Elizabeth unless we throw her down forever? The people of England want a queen of their faith, one pledged to tolerance and fairness who will restore the church and the old ways of England.
This is not my plan, I do not plot treason. I would never encourage rebellion against an anointed queen, however badly she has betrayed me, however false her claim. But I have lived long enough to know that all things are decided by God. When the tide is running strongly it will carry all the boats. If God gives us a great victory and the army of the North rides on to take London, then it is God who gives me the throne of England and I would be an ungrateful daughter to refuse it.